I am the LAZY editor that set off Hugh Barnes to post his "Prohibiting Updates" announcement.

Question

For those of you who care - here is the change that I made to a profile.  Carter-2669 is also my ancestor and keeps appearing on my error list as being an uncleaned profile.  So I fixed the error by eliminating clutter.  I had no sources to add nor did I change anything of value.  I explained all this to Mr. Barnes but he would rather be rude to me.  I hope he feels better tomorrow!!

Comments

I write code cleanup or style cleanup in the explain change made field when I do this sort of thing.

Answer 1

Patrica,

I apologize.  I am by nature overly abrupt.  At the same time, I constantly run into changes on profile with NO sourcing as I did with the one in question.  It only takes 30 second to note a change and I think we owe to each other to do so. Once again I offer my apologies for being blunt and to the point.

Comments

Speaking from my experience of correcting the Last Name at Birth of hundreds of women in the Swedish past, who have been erroneously given a male patronymic instead of a female: since these are all managed by others (and I have been kindly admitted on the trusted-list) I always put something in the explanation box. Except that I sometimes forget. Perhaps I don't even notice forgetting. From my experience of my own usage, I would be inclined to be forgiving of the occasional forgetfulness of others.

Answer 2

Patricia, If you had just added the line "Cleaned up unneeded clutter to fix error xxx" I think the problem could have been averted. When just viewing the change log we can not always tell what the other person's reasoning was so by just telling us why you made the change helps with collaboration.

Comments

But Dale, in this case it's very clear from the change log.  If this had been a profile I managed, I would have thanked Patricia.  Explanation filled out or not.

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Nan, I think the real problem is that if you look at the change log unless someone adds a comment about the change you have to look at each change to see what was done. With the comments added you do not have to look at each change but the log itself tells you what was done. If you are making a lot of changes and saves it would save time and make understanding the changes much easier. In some cases the changes may seem minor and to the editor may seem like they need no explanation but to others it not only makes for less misunderstandings done the road and offers better documentation to help prove the changes.  See the change log for the profile Petrick-41 to see what I mean.

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Dale, I understand what you're saying, and the importance of the explanation field. However, my comment was addressed to this particular case, and your specific comment above, which blamed Patricia for the blow-up.  It was an easily-found, small clean-up.  And for the original complainer (is that a word?) to throw around accusations of laziness, and proudly announce how rude he was, is completely out of proportion.

Again, I'm not disagreeing that using the explanation field is a good thing.

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Nan, I did not intend to "blame" Patricia for the problem, she did that herself in her question, I was just pointing out that by adding a simple comment the issue would be averted. I have started to get into the habit of adding a comment every time I make a change and can tell everyone that it is not a waste of time it even helps save time when you are the only one doing any edits on a profile because you do not have to look at every change to see what has been done, that information is right there on the list of changes.  What I am saying is that the true LAZY way is to document your edits using the Explain your changes: box.

Answer 3

Hi Patricia

I looked at the changes you made for that profile, that was listed in the Change log.

To me, it's very clear that:

• The changes were minimal
• It was obvious that it was clean up of the profile. (And a post-merge cleanup, for that matter.)
• Nothing substantive was removed or added

I'm not sure what everyone is complaining about. I don't see why you would need to add an explanation for something like that.

 

Answer 4

This is the answer I posted on Hugh Barnes' question, slightly revised to fit the context here...

I am a strong believer in the value of the "explain your changes" field. Yes, it's possible to click on each of the edits in a change history to  figure out when a particular addition or deletion was made, and by whom, but a good summary of the edit makes it far easier to understand a profile's history. I try to explain all of my changes, but I confess that I sometimes fail to do so -- particularly if I'm making a inconsequential edit, such as fixing a typo in an edit I made 30 seconds earlier.

I'd like to offer a compromise approach that would greatly increase the utilization of the "explain your changes" field. Wikipedia has a feature (it's an opt-in feature for registered users, so you won't encounter it if you make anonymous edits there) that prompts people to add an edit summary before saving a change. If I try to save an edit there without explaining my change, I see a message box that says

Reminder: You have not provided an edit summary. Edit summaries help other users understand the intention of your edits. Please enter one before you click Save page again, or your edit will be saved without one.

In my experience at Wikipedia, that's been very effective in ensuring that I explain my changes. I believe that a similar reminder here -- not a mandatory requirement to add an edit summary, but just a nag -- would cause many more contributors to get into the habit of explaining (or at least describing) their changes.

Note: At Wikipedia, users who don't use the edit summary are viewed unfavorably when they seek extra editing privileges or positions of responsibility in the community.

Comments

I just cannot help thinking of how nagged I'd be when editing the profiles I have created, checking sources, writing the bio, going back and forth between my notes, the digitized sources, and the edit page. Saving ever so often.